If you are interested in cooling, I suggest that you replace your thermal paste.

In my research I have found that the thermal paste is, paradoxically, the least thermally conducting part of a PC heat pipeline. So, use as little of it as possible, to avoid adding thickness.

Or use one made of a metal alloy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdTsra-uLBI

> In my research I have found that the thermal paste is, paradoxically, the least thermally conducting part of a PC heat pipeline.

Well, the second least conducting after what is meant to replace: Air.

And it makes sense, if it were more thermally conducting, then you should just make the entire cooler out of thermal paste.

Indium gallium dries out. It needs annual repasting.

Also, using too much thermal paste is not an issue. What matters is mounting pressure and geometry. Replacing the bendy Independent Loading Mechanism (ILM) with an aftermarket square bracket. If you want to go further you can lap the IHS or even delid for direct-die cooling.

Delid for liquid metal TIM in between the IHS and die made sense for a few years, but Intel has switched backed to solder, so the only gain to be had with delidding these days is with direct die.

I have liquid metal of 5y old and it's just as new - the thing does not 'dry out', but it can be pumped out during thermal expansion and contraction.

> ...use as little of it as possible, to avoid adding thickness.

You might be interested in watching this: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUWVVTY63hc> and maybe also this: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWu2tcm4wL8>. Do note that the videos contain graphs which summarize the findings.

Aside from Indium Gallium paste drying out as another post mentioned, it also has significant downsides. A big one is that it's electrically conductive so if it gets on the motherboard or oozes off the cpu, it can short out things on the motherboard. Another one is that the gallium in liquid metal will react with metals like aluminum, copper, and nickel and over the long term might cause bad things to occur.

Gallium will not really react with Nickel, in the worst case it will be tarnished which has no measurable impact on the thermal conductivity. Also the metals don't dry out (as in evaporate), but they can be pumped out.

> So, use as little of it as possible, to avoid adding thickness.

Don't do this. Far far worse than having too much thermal paste is having too little. Assuming you are using non-conductive paste(which most these days are), be liberal with the thermal paste. As long as you stay within reason it pretty much doesn't matter thermally how excessive you apply, especially when applying on a heat spreader.

If this is true, why not have coolers built into the CPU? Like a block of metal attached? Is it a small improvement gained? Or manufacturing nightmare?

You could mount the cooler directly on top of the die with the Athlon XP. Turns out people kept damaging the CPU, hence the switch back to heatspreaders.

Permanently attaching a cooler to the CPU itself doesn't really seem like a viable option to me. Mounting it to the motherboard would be a nightmare, and you'd end up creating a one-size-fits-nobody cooling solution. Nobody would be happy with the cooler you end up choosing.

In reality, cooling paste really isn't that big of a deal.

Oof, I remember how terrifying it was to mount one of those Athlon coolers, having heard so many stories about chipping the CPU or cracking a corner off.

This one does[1]. It have a bunch of pistons on springs touching each chiplet, all in mineral oil. Price bit out of range for typical desktop user tho

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ3oJlt4GrI

It's called direct die cooling and that's pretty much what happens in the laptops. The reason why the IHS was introduced some 20 years back was the cracking of the silicon while mounting a cooler on top of it was quite easy.

neat. something like an integrated heat spreader? that's a pretty good idea

Doesn't extra paste just squeeze out the sides?

Yes. This myth needs to die.

The advice in the subsection is just hilarious.

It squeezes out and potentially causes a short-circuit as some pastes are electrically conductive.

Very few modern thermal pastes are conductive.